31.10.12 | day ten ‘building community’

Clem made another trip up to Rajpur today, to pay for the third and final week of training for the Chander Nagar women at Chhaya. She’ll be back on Friday to collect the material needed to set up our own studio in the new ‘craft shed’. Back on the site, the team was busy completing the sub-structure and planning out the timber eave beams. Here’s an account of day ten: described by AA Visiting School Participant, Vishal Jayan – a 4th year student at the School of Architecture and Planning in New Delhi.

A busy day was awaiting us at the school today. As per the schedule we were supposed to finish casting the floor slab and making the timber frames. The timber group started finishing the frames while the construction group was trying to finish the infill. Two of the completed timber frames were erected on the footings after which there was a discussion on how to make the structure more earthquake proof. After a bit of delays, the construction team finally managed to finish filling and compacting the infill. The slab was cast after 3-4 hours of hard work. In the meantime, the timber group finished making the drawings for the cross beams and make a few mock-ups of the in-fill panel.

chhaya’s mobile ink trays for wood-block printing

the chander nagar women with their teacher, bimla

bimla and kamarjaha

bimla smiling

chhaya’s natural dyes

looking at options for the metal roofing

raising a couple of timber frames to test them out

looking good!

erling making a sample bend with alumniniun sheeting

sonu and vishal making some sample concrete finishes

sprinkling cement onto the concrete to absorb some of the surface water before finishing

maria trying to match sonu’s finish!

hanna and saurav building the brick retaining wall for the extension of the plinth through the trees at the front

the extension of the plinth at he front with un-levelled and un-compacted infill material

all hands on deck to lift the steel mesh

raising the steel mesh

and they’re off…

stepping up onto the plinth with the steel mesh

getting the mesh into position

laying the mesh onto the compacted infill material

propping the mesh up with stone to make sure it doesn’t drop down during the pour